Last night TW & I went to see James Acaster at the Connaught Studio in Worthing. It was part of Matt's Comedy Club, a regular night in Worthing which has been going for a few years now.
James was supported by Jay Foreman, who is a musical comedian. He is actually Beardyman's brother, which I didn't know until I looked him up on Wikipedia just before the show. And it showed, he did some really clever stuff (which was also funny) with his guitar and the songs during the show.
The night started with three local comics who each had a short slot. The funniest of these was a passive-aggressive housewife called Lindy Larkin, she came across like Alison Steadman in Abigail's Party, and she had some really sharp lines.
Then Jay came on, and sang some songs. They were light, witty and enjoyable. He had a couple of more eccentric jokes, and the John Lennon song was brilliant, I thought. The half-hour or so that he was on sped by.
Then it was time for the interval. TW went and bought a CD from Jay, and as she does, they got talking. She told him that we'd been to see Beardyman, and they had a nice chat. And then, it was time for the main event.
I was looking forward to seeing James, I'd seen him on a couple of TV shows, and Richard Herring interviewed him last year and bigs him up a lot, as part of the new generation of comics coming through. His show was likeable enough, and he is certainly a likeable fellow. He plays a lot on his geekiness / awkwardness and the way he interprets other people's behaviour (in the show) is cleverly wrong. The show really sparked when he accidentally swore. To explain, Matt's Comedy Club is a "family friendly" event, and so they must have asked the comedians not to swear. I'm sure they wouldn't have asked Frankie Boyle to perform, for instance. James coped well, I'm not sure that his act involves much swearing anyway, but he accidentally swore anyway, and there followed a moment or two of inspired lunacy, the act began to take off. The finale was odd, but funny, and all the way through it seemed to be building to something, but never quite getting there.
It was a good evening, and I'm glad I went, it was good to have time out with TW, even if we were both hanging and tired. That may have affected my enjoyment of the evening, but there were great bits there, little nuggets of brilliance.
This morning we played Jay Foreman's CD to the girls and they really enjoyed it. We have a permanent memento of the evening, as well as the memory of the laughter, and of course next time we see any of them on the TV, we'll be able to say we were there and we saw them...
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